Fortinet − a leading network security provider and the worldwide leader of unified threat management (UTM) solutions − today released its latest Threat Landscape report, which details a new variant of Zitmo (Zeus in the mobile) that was written to run on the Android operating system, allowing the malware to continue its expansion across mobile platforms beyond the Windows Mobile, Symbian and BlackBerry operating systems. The first variant of Zitmo on Symbian OS (SymbOS/Zitmo.A!tr) was found in September 2010 and was based on commercial, Russian spyware for Symbian 3rd and 5th editions (SMS Monitor Lite). Zitmo has since evolved and is now capable of intercepting two-factor authentication that banks use to validate the identity of the account holder when logging in (it is a one-time password that is sent to a mobile device via SMS). Even if a mobile user does not rely on the two-factor authentication method for banking activities, Zitmo can forward and spy on all SMS messages, making it a valid threat.

Trojan Malware Downloader W32/Exchanger

On July 24, FortiGuard Labs observed a surge of activity from the W32/Exchanger Trojan downloader, which downloaded and installed 10 different malware families within the course of a day onto the lab’s test system. This type of rapid mass infection can cause a system to become unstable and ultimately crash. “Most infections we see like this in our labs serve a similar purpose to W32/Exchanger and are known in the digital underground as ‘loaders’,” said Derek Manky, senior security strategist at Fortinet. “Loaders are botnets with simple functionality. They report status, such as uptime, operating system version, geographic location, etc., and receive download commands from their controllers. Such statistics help cyber criminals manage their infections, bill customers for installing malware on a given number of systems and provide reports to their clients as a quality of service metric.”